The finished start - creating a toilet for the third world

Like many farm inventions, Robert Rowley's idea for a sustainable toilet came about out of a combination of tinkering and necessity.

He's spent a lot of time on the concept and come up with an idea which he feels could stretch way beyond the confines of shearing sheds and the like, and which could help to solve hygene problems in third world countries.

A large part of farming is about observing life cycles, and perhaps that's partly what's inspired the name Robert has given his invention - 'The Finished Start'.

His design recycles things which are common on farms including standard size plastic buckets, and simply places two of them inside a wooden cabinet with a piece of specially shaped stainless steel separating the two.

As Robert explains, the stainless steel is the only part of the invention which really needs to be specially manufactured.

The two buckets are placed to allow for male and female differences, with one collecting urine, and the other collecting feaces.

According to Robert the urine can be easily watered down and then used on gardens, while the contents of the second bucket (which is lined with newspaper and dried out using sawdust) can be incinerated to create biochar.

Robert goes on to explain this biochar can play an important role in rejuvenating the soil, and because it's incinerated it's safe to use, allowing for a quick turnaround compared with having to wait months for composted human waste to be safe to use.

When it comes to marketing the idea Robert says he's no PR person, but he uses the analogy of a French King who made potatoes popular by passing a law decreeing they were only to be eaten by the aristocracy.

Those lower down the social scale started pinching the potatoes, thus making them incredibly popular.

Perhaps in a similar way Robert is keen to get a really good prototype of his toilet out there in the hope someone will basically steal the design and start manufacturing it to get it out to those third world communities where he feels it will have the most impact.

The toilet would also have many uses on farms, in hiking rest stops, at music festivals, and so on - basically anywhere where people need a toilet and the water supply is either limited or non-existent.